Friday, November 25, 2016

"POLYHYMNIA, a daughter of Zeus, and one of the nine Muses. She presided over lyric poetry, and was believed to have invented the lyre. In works of art she was usually represented in a pensive attitude."

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

"He stopped short. Tenseness flamed along his nerves. His muscles pressed with sudden, unrelenting strength against his bones. His great forelegs—twice as long as his hindlegs—twitched with a shuddering movement that arched every razor-sharp claw. The thick tentacles that sprouted from his shoulders ceased their weaving undulation, and grew taut with anxious alertness."

"Utterly appalled, he twisted his great cat head from side to side, while the little hairlike tendrils that formed each ear vibrated frantically, testing every vagrant breeze, every throb in the ether."

"But there was no response, no swift tingling along his intricate nervous system, not the faintest suggestion anywhere of the presence of the all-necessary id. Hopelessly, Coeurl crouched, an enormous catlike figure silhouetted against the dim reddish skyline, like a distorted etching of a black tiger resting on a black rock in a shadow world."

"He licked his lips in brief gloating memory of the moment his slavering jaws tore the victim into precious toothsome bits."

"'Ah,' said Siedel. 'I was right. The tentacles each develop into seven strong fingers. Provided the nervous system is complicated enough, those fingers could, with training, operate any machine.'"

A.E. van Vogt, The Black Destroyer

"Ah," said Siedel, the psychologist, "the tentacles end in suction cups. Provided the nervous system is complex enough, he could with training operate any machine."

“He plunged his mouth into the warm body and let the lacework of tiny suction cups strain the id out of the cells.”

Friday, November 18, 2016

"In Tartarus the Titans writhe, and beneath the fiery Aetna groan the children of Uranus and Gaea."

H.P. Lovecraft & Anna Helen Crofts, Poetry And the Gods

"And Ouranos came, bringing on night and longing forlove, and he lay about Gaia spreading himself full upon her. Then the son from his ambush stretched forth his left hand and in his right took the great long sickle with jagged teeth, and swiftly lopped off his own father's members and cast them away to fall behind him."

Hesiod, Theogony

"May the great wide bronze sky (ouranos) fall upon me from above, the fear of earth-born men."

Theognis, Fragment 1. 869

"OURANOS (Uranus) was the primordial god (protogenos) of the sky. The Greeks imagined the sky as a solid dome of brass, decorated with stars, whose edges descended to rest upon the outermost limits of the flat earth. Ouranos was the literal sky, just as his consort Gaia (Gaea) was the earth."

"Ouranos does not appear in early Greek art but Egyptian depictions of their sky-goddess Nut demonstrate how he was imagined--as a gigantic, star-spangled man with long arms and legs, resting on all fours, with his finger-tips in the far east, his toes in the far west, and his arching body raised to form the dome of the sky."

Thursday, November 17, 2016

"The searchers had found the place only because of the chanting and the final cry. It had been close to five that morning, and after an all-night encampment the party had begun to pack up for its empty-handed return to the mines. Then somebody had heard faint rhythms in the distance, and knew that one of the noxious old native rituals was being howled from some lonely spot up the slope of the corpse-shaped mountain. They heard the same old names—Mictlanteuctli, Tonatiuh-Metzli, Cthulhutl, Ya-R’lyeh, and all the rest—but the queer thing was that some English words were mixed with them."

H.P. Lovecraft, The Electric Executioner

"The Aztec goddess named 'golden bells' was among Coatlicue's children, who tried to kill their mother rather than let her bear rivals to them. Coyolxauhqui tried to warn her mother, so her siblings decapitated her and threw her head into the night sky. A grieving Coatlicue place Coyolxauhqui's shining head in the night sky. Coyolxauhuqui may have descended from the older moon goddess Metztli, who had two phases: One that promoted growth, another that discouraged it."

Patricia Monaghan, Encyclopedia of Goddesses and Heroines

"From that day forward, Metztli, the moon, was forever dimmer than the sun, his face permanently marked with the imprint of the rabbit, visible in pattern of light and dark patches on the full moon. Metztli was sometimes portrayed as a goddess rather than a god, and though she controlled fertility, she also represented night, dampness, and cold."

Tamra Andrews, Dictionary Of Nature Myths: Legends of the Earth, Sea and Sky

"The dying Coatlicue gave birth to Huitzilopochtli, who, armed with his xiuhcoatl weapon, dismembered Coyolxauhqui and routed the Centzon Huitznahua at the hill of Coatepec."

Mary Miller & Karl Taube, The Gods and Symbols Of Ancient Mexico And The Maya

"Gol and Geiravör (Spear Bearer),Randgrid and Radgrid,And Reginleif;These bear ale to the einherjes.

These are called valkyries. Odin sends them to all battles, where they choose those who are to be slain, and rule over the victory. Gud and Rosta, and the youngest norn, Skuld, always ride to sway the battle and choose the slain. Jord, the mother of Thor, and Rind, Vale’s mother, are numbered among the goddesses."Snorri Sturluson, The Prose Edda"They favor the most heroic fighter: those most highly qualified to join the heroes already in Valhalla. Each Valkyry identifies such a man and urges him into the thickest of the fray, sharpening his bloodlust with her savage cries and bidding him to ignore the wounds which sap his strength. At last he falls to the weapons of his opponents, and his attendant Valkyry waits by the bleeding corpse."Michael Page & Robert Ingpen, Encyclopedia Of Things That Never Were

"ERATO was one of the nine Mousai, the goddesses of music, song and dance. In the Classical era, when the Mousai were assigned specific artistic and literary spheres, Erato was named Muse of erotic poetry and mime, and represented with a lyre. Her name means 'lovely' or beloved' from the Greek word eratos."

Monday, November 14, 2016

"OURANIA (Urania) was one of the nine Mousai, the goddesses of music, song and dance. In the Classical era, when the Mousai were assigned specific artistic and literary spheres, Ourania was named Muse of astronomy and astronomical writings. In this guise she was depicted with a celestial globe."